


Count

by Toft



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Established Relationship, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-10-06
Updated: 2006-10-06
Packaged: 2017-10-19 22:28:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,142
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/205896
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Toft/pseuds/Toft
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Wait, you count our relationship from the first time we had sex in a <em>bed</em>?" (aka. John has a commitment crisis)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Count

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to amy13 and mecurtin for beta; additional thanks to amireal and siriaeve.

1.

On a particular Tuesday morning, John Sheppard rolled out of Rodney McKay’s bed, brushed his teeth, went for a run, took a shower, had a cup of coffee in the staff meeting, reviewed some training reports, spent some time on the targets with Ronon, had a monthly checkup with Heightmeyer, and as she was saying, “And how are you feeling about Earth?” and writing in her notebook, he happened to look up at her calendar, which had pictures of ice floes on it, and thought, _Jesus_.

  
 **2.**

They were in Ford’s cave, and Rodney was totally out of his mind, twitching and flinching with the enzyme humming through his body. John came awake in the middle of the night to the sound of Ronon’s low grunts and Teyla’s high, breathy moans and beside him Rodney sitting on the dirt floor, hands clenched white at his sides, chest heaving like he was about to have a cardiac arrest, shaking and sweating. John had sat up and put a hand on Rodney’s shoulder, alarmed, trying to still him, slow him down, but Rodney had come to life under his hand, arched into it, gasped, “Pleasepleaseplease oh god touch me.”

John had said, “Hey, hey, easy, Rodney,” but Rodney stared at him with wild, empty eyes, then jerked like a fish and shut his eyes and groaned through his teeth when John put his hand on him again, like it hurt him. When he came, he said, “John, John,” and John didn’t say anything.

  
 **3.**

Pulling off his shoes on the bed next to John, who was lying on his stomach, reading _War and Peace_ , Rodney said, “Seriously. What is wrong with you? I’m tired and my head is killing me, and if you’re going to just keep being weird and even more monosyllabic than usual I’m just going to go back to mine.”

John followed the line he was reading with his eyes again for about the hundredth time without taking in any of the words, and tried to remember when it had become a routine, that they alternated quarters. He couldn’t.

“It’s been a year,” he muttered, then immediately felt like a fourteen-year-old girl, and wished he hadn’t said anything.

“What?” said Rodney, looking totally bewildered. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“Forget it,” gritted John, and started the line again.

“Fine,” snapped Rodney. “I was going to offer you a blow job, but I won’t bother.”

The twisted feeling in John’s stomach tightened until it was almost queasiness. A year was a long time; a year was _significant_. A year, with Sarah, had been when they’d gotten engaged, but, fuck, this was Rodney, and somewhere along the line this had become a _relationship_.

  
 **4.**

Rodney said out of the darkness, his hands scrabbling at the walls neither of them could see, the sound of water all around them and cold trickling over their feet, “Oh, god. Oh, god, we’re going to die. We’re going to die.”

“No, we’re not,” said John.

“We – Colonel – where are you, please -” Rodney said, and then his hand was gripping John’s shoulder hard enough to hurt, he was feeling down John’s arm to his hand and clutching it tightly, interlacing their fingers, and both their breathing was too loud over the sound of water.

“They’ll find us,” said John.

“No, they really, really won’t,” said Rodney quietly, and he sounded like he was already _going_ , fuck, like he’d given up and was letting go, and John said, panic cold in his stomach, colder than the icy water now biting at his ankles, “Rodney. _Rodney_. Fuck, come on.”

“John -” said Rodney, a frightened little hiccup, and John reached over to take hold of Rodney’s shoulder, shake him or something, because John needed him _with_ him, here, then suddenly Rodney’s mouth was against his, kissing John, hard and terrified, before he broke away.

“I can’t -” gasped Rodney, his breath damp and too fast on John’s face, and John kissed him again frantically in the dark, cupping his stubbled jaw, grabbing at his shoulders and holding onto him, giving him something to hold onto.

“You have to,” he rasped, not really hearing what he was saying, pulling Rodney against him, “Come on, Rodney.”

Rodney ground up against John, sending a bolt of heat through him, and whispered, “Please -” as John was already fumbling at their flies, and ice curled around their calves.

“Yeah, yeah, that’s it, come on -”

Pressing together, skin and spit and come, numb from the knees down, John opened and closed his eyes, but it made no difference. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Rodney whispered against his throat, and it was his lips brushing the talisman the priestess had given them which suddenly lit them up and made the walls shimmer all around them when the roof fell in.

  
 **5.**

Rodney palmed on the light from the doorway and marched in. John sat up, blinking.

“What? What happened?”

“You’re talking about the harvest festival, aren’t you?”

John slumped back on the bed and covered his face with his arm, brown after-images dancing behind his eyelids.

“It’s no big deal, Rodney.”

“Have you hit your head? Because I seriously don’t know what you’re talking about. What happened at the harvest festival?”

“ _Fine_ ,” said John, feeling his face heat up, although he didn’t know if it was embarrassment or annoyance that Rodney was making such a big deal over this, when it was stupid, really, and sat up. “It was when we – you know, Jesus, Rodney, do you want a diagram?”

Rodney suddenly got it, and his eyes got even wider.

“You – oh my god, you’re pissed because I forgot our anniversary. I’m sorry, was I too busy with the little matter of _saving our lives_ to get you flowers? And, seriously, has your dick fallen off? Because that’s really -”

“ _McKay_ -”

“And, what, that wasn’t even – wait, you count our relationship from the first time we had sex in a _bed_? You realize you’ve just invalidated any meaningful attachments I had before I left grad school? I was sleeping with this one guy for nearly six months before we -”

“For fuck’s sake, Rodney, it’s not about the goddamned bed! Look, sorry for thinking that it _mattered_ , okay?”

“Oh, for – John? John! Oh, well _that’s_ mature.”

  
 **6.**

John was sprawled practically over Rodney’s lap, laughing, Teyla had her head on Ronon’s thigh and was giggling as he plaited grass into her hair, Carson had gone to get more of the Athosian punch stuff and Elizabeth was stretched out on the grass beside them.

“No, no,” Rodney said, waving the hand that wasn’t holding John up, “It was Michael Keaton, _then_ Val Kilmer -”

“Hush,” Radek said suddenly. Elizabeth was asleep, her head pillowed on her arm, relaxed, for once, her face smoothed out and pretty. The four of them pulled themselves up with whispered giggles and near-misses and stumbled off respectfully as Radek gently pushed a folded-up blanket under Elizabeth’s head in place of her arm and pulled another rug over her. Rodney had an arm around John’s waist, and John pressed closer against him. He was warm.

“Teyla!” he said, and it came out a bit louder than he’d meant. He blinked, and she smiled sunnily at him from Ronon’s shoulder. “This wassa _good_ idea.”

“Oh, wow, you are really drunk,” snickered Rodney.

“M’not,” sulked John.

“You so are,” Rodney said, looking up at a shriek of laughter as Ronon and Teyla fell over. “Oh, god. One unpleasant experience in graduate school, and I’m doomed to be a chaperone for the rest of my life.”

“You should drink some more, Rodney,” John said, leaning closer to his ear. “Then we could all chapo - chaperone each other.”

Rodney twisted to look down at him, his mouth quirked in a crooked smile which was so full of affection that it made happiness curl up inside John’s stomach.

“Oh, really?” he said, voice pitched lower, just for John. It was dark, the coloured lamps bobbed on their washing lines between the trees, and the drums and crackle of the fire were far off. It was only his friends, here. John grinned and lowered his eyelashes, something like dizziness making what he’d meant as a joke coming out more like a challenge.

“You want to chaperone me, Rodney?”

“Do you know,” said Rodney, sounding a little out of breath, “I really think I do.”

  
 **7.**

“So all the other times before that were – what?”

“I’m sure they need you in the lab, Rodney.”

Rodney had had to jog to catch up with him, and was breathing hard already. “Oh, come on. What about - what about that time, in Ford’s camp, when -”

“That didn’t count.”

“Why not? We had sex! There was definite mutual masturbation involved!”

“You were strung out!” John hissed, pulling Rodney out of the corridor into an abandoned lab, because, for god’s sake. “I was _helping you out_. You didn’t even remember.”

“I did so remember! Although I admit that after taking a massive overdose to save all your lives, I was somewhat confused as to what – that is, it wouldn’t have been the first time I’d – I may have, ah, thought I’d imagined it. For a while.”

“There,” John said, shrugging one shoulder and turning his back on Rodney. “Didn’t count.”

  
 **8.**

“Rodney,” said John, thumbs hooked over Rodney’s waistband, still a little drunk and breathless from Rodney’s thorough, surprisingly careful kisses, “You want to go to bed with me?”

“Is that – oh, a rhetorical question?” sighed Rodney, as John licked the line of his jaw and slid a hand up his back under his t-shirt. Rodney smelt of fruit and alcohol and fire-smoke.

“Nope.”

“Well – okay,” Rodney said, sounding so amazed that John couldn’t help grinning like he was flying at two hundred miles an hour. They were warm, awake, nobody was trying to kill them, and nobody would come looking for them for the whole night. They could take their time.

“You want this, Rodney?” John murmured, not because there was any doubt, exactly, with the way Rodney was tipping his head back for John’s mouth and sighing, but just for the pleasure of hearing Rodney breathe, “Yes. God, I – yes.”

John kissed Rodney again, and thought about combat situations and nukes and the Wraith and being a long way from Earth, such a long way that maybe some of the rules didn’t matter so much, anymore.

“Yeah,” he said into Rodney’s collarbone. “Me too.”

  
 **9.**

“Colonel Sheppard! Shepp- oh, there you are.”

John swore internally, and slammed his papers on the floor.

“I cannot believe you are still sulking about this.”

“Fuck you.”

Rodney stood over him, his arms folded and chin stuck forward. “You are being totally unreasonable.”

“ _I’m_ being -”

“Okay,” snapped Rodney. “Okay, fine. You want dates? I’ll give you dates. It’s been one year, four months, two weeks and three days since Ford’s camp. It’s been one year, three months and one day since the mine shaft. One year and two days since the harvest festival. Five months, two weeks and two days since you spent the night. Do you know how long it’s been since the first time you flew me to McMurdo?”

John hesitated, then opened his mouth, but Rodney stormed right on. “Of course you don’t. Three years, eight months, one week and one day. Three years, four months and six days since you sat in the chair. Two years, six months, three weeks, one day, three hours and,” Rodney glanced at his watch “-and forty two minutes since you flew off with that nuke – which _I_ built, by the way, and I don’t think I ever thanked you for nearly leaving that on my head for the _rest of my life_. Two years, six months, three weeks, one day, three hours and forty one minutes since I realized I was in love with you.”

Rodney’s voice broke a little on that, and John was already staring, but that was - “Rodney. Rodney, Jesus.”

“Two years, one month and one week since the second time I thought you were dead. One year, eight months and three weeks since the third – the third time I thought you were dead. Nine months, two weeks and five days since the fourth.”

“Rodney,” said John gently. “Hey.”

Rodney dropped his hands, looking despairing. “It’s just – I’m a shitty boyfriend, John! I’ve always been a shitty boyfriend, I don’t _remember_ anniversaries and birthdays and stuff, and I’ve never – I’ve never _had_ to before, because – because I’ve never needed to _count_ , in case it was the last time, and I needed to _know_ -”

  
 **10.**

“Rodney.”

“And it’s not as if you’ve even -”

“Rodney. Three seconds until I kiss you.”

“Oh – oh, that is just typical. You always -”

“Three.”

“Why can’t you just -”

“Two.”

“I - John, I -”

“One.”

End  



End file.
